16 ms·

The privatization of policing

126 points by jseliger 4y ago

hprotagonist 4y ago
We don’t need any loogie guns, thank you so very much.
- T3OU-736 4y ago
  Unfamiliar term: "loogie gun". What does it mean? Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash comes up from search - is that the reference?
  - hprotagonist 4y ago
    that’s the reference. as is my user name
  - FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
    I'm not sure if this is OP's meaning, but, in that book, the moderately-wealthy live in gated communities ("burbclaves") with private security forces, who have nonlethal weapons that trap people in some kind of sticky expanding foam. It's just a minor world-building detail. It shows up when the initial protagonist ("Y.T.") gets involved in a scuffle while delivering pizza to one of these burbclaves. Relatedly, the pizza franchise is owned by "Uncle Enzo", a likeable Italian-American mobster. So everything is in some sense a private protection racket run by one mob or another.
djinnandtonic 4y ago
There's a lot wrong here: 1. Don't conflate business interests with the interests of the population of a city. I don't doubt there is rising demand for private armed security from the 1% of Portlanders who own businesses, that does not reflect on everyone. 2. Portland has seen rising violent crime but this is part regression to the mean (Portland is the safest city of it's size, even after the 2020 spike) and part of a larger trend (crime rose everywhere in the U.S. since 2020). The assertion that policing has broken down and the city is lawless is laughable.
- djha-skin 4y ago
  1. They may only be the 1% of portlanders who own businesses, but they own 100% of the businesses. The other 99% have to buy bread from somewhere, so it totally affects them. Further, it's happening because of how they voted. 2. Anyone who's ever been to Portland wouldn't or couldn't call it an average city. Even before the pandemic there were homeless people everywhere. I couldn't turn my head and not see a tent. It didn't look particularly fun either; Portland gets a lot of rain. Also the article doesn't assert that policing is broken down, they assert that the police are underfunded and take two hours to get there.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    It’s interesting that Portland is seeing record homicides because it’s far more gentrified than ever. Portland had only 54 homicides in 1993, when crime was much higher nationally, and Portland specifically was much seedier. Last couple of years are close to double the 1993 peak, but population growth since then is only 50%.
    - kneebonian 4y ago
      No this is incorrect, I know people that left from Portland and Seattle following the "firey but mostly peaceful protests" the fact of the matter is they gutted the police, the police that remain know that if they actually do their job they're likely to be the next national outrage, and they are being told by their bosses and the politicians to do nothing. As such the criminals now know they can run wild with no prevention it isn't gentrification it is what happens when an entire city turns their back on any semblance of law and order. Portland will not recover for a long time if ever.
      - throwayyy479087 4y ago
        [flagged]
  - djinnandtonic 4y ago
    > Further, it's happening because of how they voted. [citation needed] Its happening because business-backed city leadership decided to deprioritize affordable housing in an effort to uplevel the tax base and get rid of all the artist types, with the completely forseeable result being an explosion in homelessness
trabant00 4y ago
> In response to calls to “defund the police,” the city government cut $15 million from the department’s budget. [...] Portland’s homicide rate rose 207 percent from January 2019 through June 2021 > those who are unable to afford private security enjoy little protection from rising crime. Security—once a public good—is being privatized. Every institution makes mistakes and has malicious actors. But you have to ask yourself how things would be without that institution. You can't just go "The system has problems, down with the system!".
- 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, that $15 million number represents a 3% cut made as part of a larger effort to balance the city's budget, not any kind of radical defund/abolish initiative. edit: It might be closer to 6%; different articles seem to have different numbers, and it's not always clear whether the cuts are being described relative to the previous year's budget vs. the proposed budget (often a "cut" is just a smaller-than-expected increase). Either way, it's not very helpful to just cite the raw size of the cut without contextualizing it.
  - pleasantpeasant 4y ago
    The majority of cities actually saw an increase in their police budget. LA, which had a large defund the police movement, increased their police budget by $150 million a few months after the protests. The "defund the police" movement was a doomed endeavor with an awful name like that. I sometimes wonder if Leftists movements are purposely giving their movements god awful names like "anti-work", "quiet quitting", and even "black lives matters". If your movement's name has to be explained, it's purpose has already failed. You shouldn't need to explain a political movements name.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  And, unsurprisingly, people calling to defund the police thought about how things would be if we stopped sending thugs with military-grade arms into our communities and calling them police. Also, unsurprisingly, no one who claimed those folks were wrong bothered listening to them. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/what-is-defund-police-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/what-is-defund-police-trnd...
deleted 4y ago
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BirAdam 4y ago
First, I like this model of private policing. In the instance the article sites, the security force went at the heart of the problem rather than throwing someone into a cage. That’s a good thing. Second, if you have a failure from a public institution, a private alternative is a good thing. You get more competition, which often yields better results. Third, this isn’t very thought out, but trimming public police forces and dedicating funding and staff to more serious types of crime while allowing private police to handle petty crime could be an interesting use of resources.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  > I like this model of private policing. In the instance the article sites, the security force went at the heart of the problem rather than throwing someone into a cage. That’s a good thing. I mean this with all sincerity and zero snark: I barely recognize today's America in this story. There's a dynamic with both LEO & Privatization and it isn't leading to bulk mistreatment of vulnerable people. This lack of mistreatment is almost startling in how unfamiliar it feels.
- landemva 4y ago
  Fourth, if private security violates your rights you can sue. When government violates your rights they typically get the case dismissed due to 'qualified immunity' which USSC made up in 1970s.
  - mcbutterbunz 4y ago
    Until the lines get blurred and an off-duty police officer starts moonlighting for private security who violates your rights while you're in commission of a crime and now the question of qualified immunity while off-duty becomes a question. It doesn't seem too unlikely where in the not-so-distant future these private security companies would be made up of accredited police officers.
    - landemva 4y ago
      > now the question of qualified immunity while off-duty becomes a question. I am curious if there is case law to support your theory. It would be hilarious to read about a city or county attorney trying to file a motion to dismiss, when the city or county would not be a party to the case.
djha-skin 4y ago
As a country we have played around with private policing (the Pinkerton detective agency) after the civil war. We decided we didn't like it. Privatization of police is bad because only those with money get the benefits. What's this article does not talk about are the countless neighborhoods and streets that don't have security guards protecting them. The article puts security guards in a very pretty light and maybe this is true, but even so: they can only go where they're paid to go. The whole point of socialization is to make sure that everybody gets a benefit, poor or rich.
- jbotdev 4y ago
  Well, if the problem they’re addressing is largely petty crimes against businesses like shoplifting, you really only need private security in the business districts. Preventing crime in private homes seems like it’s a much harder task for either private or public security, given the coverage area required.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Law enforcement doesn’t prevent crime (and there is no legal expectation for them to do so). They disincentives crime by seeking to punish those who previously committed a crimes, and they disincentivize vigilante justice by offering a (ideally) non-emotional legal system alternative to retribution.
    - jbotdev 4y ago
      Technically this is talking about “private security” rather than “law enforcement. The primary goal of private security is typically the security of their clients, not enforcing the law. The article in particular talks about private security preventing crime by addressing root cause (e.g. helping those in need).
- ryder9 4y ago
  [dead]
- flandish 4y ago
rayiner 4y ago
> People who voted to defund the police are now paying for private security. Multnomah County, where downtown Portland is located, is bluer than blue. Joe Biden won there by more than 79 percent of the votes in 2020. And these people want their private security to come with guns. Leaving aside the quibble about whether anyone literally voted to “defund the police,” I do find this phenomenon interesting. Our “progressive” private school recently hired a former Detroit cop to patrol the campus with a gun. Super nice guy. But gun control is for the proletariat apparently.
- rainsford 4y ago
  Isn't it a fairly reasonable and consistent position to be in favor of armed professionals with a specific need to carry a weapon but opposed to everyone being able to carry a weapon around whenever they feel like it? The situation you mention is only a gotcha or a contradiction if you assume "gun control" means "nobody should ever have a gun for any reason", which I don't think is an actual view held by many people.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    It’s both consistent and reasonable. We had the same policy back in old country: the common people were disarmed, while wealthy people (like my family) had armed guards.
  - JoeyBananas 4y ago
    What if the average Joe is the one who has some specific need to carry a weapon? Who will hire the armed professional to protect him after they defund the police? This line of reasoning is a contradiction because it leads to the conclusion "The average Joe should carry a gun."
MilStdJunkie 4y ago
"Emma Freire is a senior writer for World magazine" which promises - on its masthead image - the following: "Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth" The Federalist, American Conservative, Former Robert Novak Journalism Fellow. Alrighty then.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
  I see you played the man and not the ball. I like that approach. You can quickly prevent a team from fielding if you break their legs.
  - tekmate 4y ago
    it's interesting, when you start getting into debating politics in your teens it's easy to fall into the trap of attacking authors instead of arguments, then as you get older you try to be better about this and then it turns around again as you age because giving the people the benefit of the doubt again and again and spending time dismantling their arguments only for them to turn around and publish the next article repeating the same things is a waste of time
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    People's associations are part of their actions and a relevant part of the context of their writing. The commenter didn't necessarily entirely dismiss the article or the argument because of it, but it is potentially valuable information to have. It's not necessary to evaluate every work completely stripped of context to engage with it honestly. Articles are written by people, with motivations for writing them, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      > It's not necessary to evaluate every work completely stripped of context to engage with it honestly It is a blatant ad hominem comment that adds nothing to the discussion of whether or not the arguments in the article are valid, but rather is an attempt to prejudice your opinion.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Somewhat surprisingly, this seems to be basically a pro 'defund the police' argument in the end. > “If you have an effective criminal-justice system, and you have effective community partners that are assisting towards long-term community transformation, then, yes, traditional security models—the security model of observe and report—works,” he says. “But when you have a breakdown in societal connectivity, you lose the ability to operate out of that business model. So we had to come up with something unique and different.” And what they came up with is something with probably better outcomes (in terms of reducing violence) than law enforcement. Of course, there is no guarantee that private security will remain "social service-y".
- Ygg2 4y ago
  >Of course, there is no guarantee that private security will remain "social service-y". I think it's bound to happen. Money creeps in, the police officers are too expensive to maintain. They get replaced by blender drones. Luckily, all media will be privatized and anyone reporting might end up in a blender drone accident.
PopAlongKid 4y ago
>Hiring private security on a large scale is novel in America. No, it is not. Colleges and universities have been doing it for many decades. "Seventy-five percent of campus law-enforcement agencies have armed officers, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. Nine in 10 public campuses had “sworn” officers, meaning those who can carry a gun, have arrest power, and wear a badge; four in 10 private campuses did."[0] TFA is focused primarily on policing related to homeless persons, while I'm pretty sure with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime (murder, rape, armed robbery, gang-related activity). [0]https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/university-chicago-campus-police-armed/557471/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/univer...
- colechristensen 4y ago
  The local state university has a real police department created by state law, it’s not private security but as legitimate as any other police department. When you call 911 within certain areas, they’re who are dispatched. This is pretty common around the country for larger universities.
  - analog31 4y ago
    I live next to a Big Ten university, and the campus police are essentially a branch of the city police department, with some special capabilities such as crowd control at the revenue sports games.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  > with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime What makes you sure of that other than the base assumption that that's what police should do so that's what they are doing? Consistently across several major urban area metro police forces the police self-reportedly spend about %5 of their time on that sort of serious violent crime. I don't see why campus police would be any higher than that.
  - PopAlongKid 4y ago
travisluis 4y ago
Private policing predates public policing,[0] and so asserting that this is is a new development is not really correct. The same is true, incidentally, of firefighting: private insurance companies formed their own private brigades to protect their policyholders' property.[1] Lots of things that we tend to think of as "naturally" public services have only very recently taken that form. [0] See p. 1193 et seq. of this article: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/publication/668464/doc/slspublic/Sklanksy%20The%20Private%20Police%2046UCLALawRev1165.pdf https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/fi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Early_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Early_...
- bee_rider 4y ago
  The first link appears to have died, at least from my point of view, so I’ll just ask — what era was this early private police force from? In Rome for example it seems like a lot of state-like functions were performed by wealthy/prestigious patrons, right? So the line seems a little blurry there. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that bounty hunters and private security pre-date the police.
kodah 4y ago
I just moved to Portland and I live in SouthEast (where this article is talking about). It was a shock seeing guards dressed in the same kit I wore in Afghanistan. They're not exaggerating the homeless situation here either. There's tons, and many of them are addicted to fentanyl or meth. The political situation is exactly as they described. The county and city in Portland have a weird relationship. They're both "Progressive" but fight over what to do and how to spend money routinely. That's how we got the tents. It's incredibly cold in Portland and we don't have sprawling shelters to go to; most people don't want shelters near them because the homeless can be wild. For example, the night I arrived in Portland I started hearing a succession of booms. I got on to Reddit to find out that at the UHaul I'd dropped my trailer off at earlier that day that someone had tried to drill one of the gas tanks, which is made of magnesium, which sparked a fire. The fire spread to multiple vehicles and they exploded. Things like gunshots are heard pretty commonly; my neighbors deal meth, and down the street a man in the Mexican Mafia had a drive-by done on his house by his ex-girlfriend. PPB (Portland Police Bureau) isn't too interested in anything that's not immediately life threatening. I didn't know these private security firms were doing this, and I'm glad they are now that I know. This situation between our county and city is what fuels this, though. PPB is its own beast; I haven't been here long enough to know what their issues are. In true Portland style, we are a bit miffed they had the energy to shutdown the Mushroom house downtown but not to deal with immense property crime. The problem with the model in this article is that stores are protected though not all businesses will pay for private security, so we have entire brands thinking about leaving Portland. People are left out of this equation though. If someone breaks into your house or your shed, I doubt you'll have the training to do what Echelon employees have. Oregon, over night, through Measure 114 also became the state with the strictest gun laws in the country thanks to Progressives and the Lutheran Church. It's a wild state of affairs here past the Cascades.
- lifeinthevoid 4y ago
  Maybe I'm a bit of a small-town boy, but I find it hard to understand that a lot of people choose to live in these conditions and don't move away to somewhere quieter/safer.
  - 4y ago
zuzu89 4y ago
anarchotyranny
newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
duped 4y ago
It sounds like one of the big problems with police are the incentives, and private security is doing a "better" job because their incentive is to reduce the actual effects of crime and not the metrics used to measure its rate/reduction (like arrests, indictments, convictions, reports, etc).
detuned 4y ago
There was a notable absence of opposing views in the article so I looked up "echelon security portland" and found a lot of objectionable actions they've taken. According to this article https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prosecutors-downtown-portland-wary-role-of-private-security/ https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prose... they've been unaccountable to the public, they've lied about what people do (pretending they've attacked them), they've lied about their use of force, and attacked people in tents to displace them. This is all just from the first quarter of the second part of a report so there is a lot more.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  Yeah. My son was detecting hints of positivity in my reaction to the story; he cautioned me that the opening blurb smelled like crafted propaganda.
  - pleasantpeasant 4y ago
    The author works at The Federalist Society. A conservative online magazine. Honestly, why is this article even on HN? It's copaganda but with an even worst twist of being a pro-private military force. The militarization of the police has been an on going issue since the 90s and now we're jumping to having corporations hiring random goons as a private police force for the wealthy and their corporations.
    - pmarreck 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - nucleogenesis 4y ago
        You’re right - whether being oppressed by people with the veneer of accountability or by a private military force without any, we should just shut up and accept it all as-is because there can’t possibly be any other way to have security.
AlbertCory 4y ago
> The guards turn up within minutes and apprehend the shoplifter. Stop right there. Here's how it could go: Guard: Wait right here, please. S: Am I under arrest? Guard: Please wait. What is your name? S: So I'm free to go? Guard: Please wait. What is your name? S: Buh-bye.
- gwillen 4y ago
  Shopkeepers have the legal power to detain shoplifters in most US jurisdictions. They've just historically (in the modern era) been too afraid to use it.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    I thought of that after writing that. A lot of legal questions come down to a game of chicken, unfortunately. Who is willing to bear the most risk? Maybe if it really was shoplifting, it goes more like this: Guard: Wait right here, please. S: Am I under arrest? Guard: You are being detained until the police arrive. What is your name? S: Oh, I'm detained? Funny, I don't notice any cuffs. So I think I'll leave now (drops goods & hops on bike). Guard: (ponders: If I tackle him, what happens?) Calls police. Now what?
deleted 4y ago
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rootusrootus 4y ago
Is Portland a good example of a common problem, though? It has a weirdly shitty style of government (though in the most recent election the citizens voted to completely upend that, so there is hope), and the police have largely abdicated their responsibility to the community because their political ideology is at odds with most of the citizens. I'm totally unsurprised that organizations with the means to do so would hire their own private security to try and fill in the gap. The article clearly has an ideological bent, but as someone living in the area, they're more right than wrong with the observations. Even if you might disagree with the reasoning, the end result is accurately portrayed.
xrd 4y ago
There is also the Portland Street Response that is helping with what's happening in Portland. I would love to read a comparison of the two approaches. https://portlandstreetresponse.org/ https://portlandstreetresponse.org/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/19/portland-street-response-going-24-7-for-nonemergency-calls/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/19/portland-street-respo...
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seydor 4y ago
This didnt mention how much of policing has moved to spying through social and other internet media. it has now a large role
janalsncm 4y ago
Maybe I was not savvy enough to detect that “defund the police” was actually a call for privatization. What many people rightly identified at the time was a need for reallocation of police funds to things like social workers. All of the increases in social problems we’ve seen in the last 40 years are the tax that we pay for increasing wealth inequality.
- n8cpdx 4y ago
  Imagine calling for “defund the NHS” and not expecting private alternatives to spring up. This is a completely predictable outcome and reveals a lack of systems/second order thinking on the part of activists. The defund crowd imagined that if you just got rid of police, you’d get rid of all of the deep-rooted social issues that policing brings to light. If only it were so.
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jmugan 4y ago
This all sounds good, but to me it highlights the downside of not enforcing laws. If you force people to hire private security, it's going to be hard to ensure that they are all nice and reasonable. Also, it's just a bad way to live with all of these private security forces everywhere.
deleted 4y ago
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xrd 4y ago
One thought: isn't this fairer, in that private businesses pay for the security they need? There are obviously some big civil liberties questions, but if a business wants to put their own security into their place of business and tout that fact as a way to bring people back downtown, I have no objections. That these private security companies are doing neighborhood security is one thing, but I know the Portland downtown is hemorrhaging businesses because of the lack of security. I'm sorry that a small mom and pop restaurant needs to foot that bill, but perhaps with a few large hotels it makes it economically viable. And, as a taxpayer, the cops I pay for don't need to do that (and they seem unwilling lately anyway).
throwaway-PDX 4y ago
I live and work in Portland. The article paints a rosey picture of a nasty set of problems. The government here is experimenting with social justice ideas. We've legalized drugs, empowered homeless camping and defunded our police. I see and empathize with the reasons to legalize drugs, not demonize the homeless or blame people for their addictions or mental health problems... and I understand the academic case for not viewing all social problems through the lense of "how can more policing fix this." All that said, our family is moving away... at the minimum to the suburbs if not to Idaho or Texas. Portland can't make these decisions in a vacuum, absent thoughtful national policy Portland has become a magnet for drug dealers and chronic drug users who are often homeless as well. While the rights of all people matter, Portland is too focused on the rights of the people like the kid in the article who are from other states and come here to destroy their lives and our community. They are not focused on my rights as a taxpayer to enjoy a safe walk around my neighborhood. We need national solutions to these issues, but until we have that I'm moving away and taking my tax dollars with me because I don't want to live in this experiment anymore. It's just not safe for my family.
- quacked 4y ago
  Many people who believe themselves to be anti-capitalist are in fact blinded by the capitalist myth that money can take the place of historically reliable pro-social behavior. "A good, prosperous life" is the result of many people collaborating in a trusting, honest environment, not "a community of fairly compensated people". People playing games with social justice seem to think that they can simply pay away problems like theft and ignore the ensuing consequences of large scale societal distrust that occur afterwards. When you leave they'll be more unhappy about the loss of your money than they will about the loss of your predictable, nonviolent daily habits.
- landemva 4y ago
  > We need national solutions to these issues You lost me there. Let's not spread the problems of Portland and SF to the other States where you can still escape.
Gasp0de 4y ago
This reads like it was written by echelons public relations department. Would you post an apple advertisement to hacker news?

126 points by jseliger 4y ago

hprotagonist 4y ago

We don’t need any loogie guns, thank you so very much.

T3OU-736 4y ago
Unfamiliar term: "loogie gun". What does it mean? Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash comes up from search - is that the reference?
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  that’s the reference. as is my user name
- FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
  I'm not sure if this is OP's meaning, but, in that book, the moderately-wealthy live in gated communities ("burbclaves") with private security forces, who have nonlethal weapons that trap people in some kind of sticky expanding foam. It's just a minor world-building detail. It shows up when the initial protagonist ("Y.T.") gets involved in a scuffle while delivering pizza to one of these burbclaves. Relatedly, the pizza franchise is owned by "Uncle Enzo", a likeable Italian-American mobster. So everything is in some sense a private protection racket run by one mob or another.

djinnandtonic 4y ago

There's a lot wrong here: 1. Don't conflate business interests with the interests of the population of a city. I don't doubt there is rising demand for private armed security from the 1% of Portlanders who own businesses, that does not reflect on everyone. 2. Portland has seen rising violent crime but this is part regression to the mean (Portland is the safest city of it's size, even after the 2020 spike) and part of a larger trend (crime rose everywhere in the U.S. since 2020). The assertion that policing has broken down and the city is lawless is laughable.

djha-skin 4y ago
1. They may only be the 1% of portlanders who own businesses, but they own 100% of the businesses. The other 99% have to buy bread from somewhere, so it totally affects them. Further, it's happening because of how they voted. 2. Anyone who's ever been to Portland wouldn't or couldn't call it an average city. Even before the pandemic there were homeless people everywhere. I couldn't turn my head and not see a tent. It didn't look particularly fun either; Portland gets a lot of rain. Also the article doesn't assert that policing is broken down, they assert that the police are underfunded and take two hours to get there.
- rayiner 4y ago
  It’s interesting that Portland is seeing record homicides because it’s far more gentrified than ever. Portland had only 54 homicides in 1993, when crime was much higher nationally, and Portland specifically was much seedier. Last couple of years are close to double the 1993 peak, but population growth since then is only 50%.
  - kneebonian 4y ago
    No this is incorrect, I know people that left from Portland and Seattle following the "firey but mostly peaceful protests" the fact of the matter is they gutted the police, the police that remain know that if they actually do their job they're likely to be the next national outrage, and they are being told by their bosses and the politicians to do nothing. As such the criminals now know they can run wild with no prevention it isn't gentrification it is what happens when an entire city turns their back on any semblance of law and order. Portland will not recover for a long time if ever.
    - throwayyy479087 4y ago
      [flagged]
- djinnandtonic 4y ago
  > Further, it's happening because of how they voted. [citation needed] Its happening because business-backed city leadership decided to deprioritize affordable housing in an effort to uplevel the tax base and get rid of all the artist types, with the completely forseeable result being an explosion in homelessness

trabant00 4y ago

> In response to calls to “defund the police,” the city government cut $15 million from the department’s budget. [...] Portland’s homicide rate rose 207 percent from January 2019 through June 2021 > those who are unable to afford private security enjoy little protection from rising crime. Security—once a public good—is being privatized. Every institution makes mistakes and has malicious actors. But you have to ask yourself how things would be without that institution. You can't just go "The system has problems, down with the system!".

0xcde4c3db 4y ago
As far as I can tell, that $15 million number represents a 3% cut made as part of a larger effort to balance the city's budget, not any kind of radical defund/abolish initiative. edit: It might be closer to 6%; different articles seem to have different numbers, and it's not always clear whether the cuts are being described relative to the previous year's budget vs. the proposed budget (often a "cut" is just a smaller-than-expected increase). Either way, it's not very helpful to just cite the raw size of the cut without contextualizing it.
- pleasantpeasant 4y ago
  The majority of cities actually saw an increase in their police budget. LA, which had a large defund the police movement, increased their police budget by $150 million a few months after the protests. The "defund the police" movement was a doomed endeavor with an awful name like that. I sometimes wonder if Leftists movements are purposely giving their movements god awful names like "anti-work", "quiet quitting", and even "black lives matters". If your movement's name has to be explained, it's purpose has already failed. You shouldn't need to explain a political movements name.
drewcoo 4y ago
And, unsurprisingly, people calling to defund the police thought about how things would be if we stopped sending thugs with military-grade arms into our communities and calling them police. Also, unsurprisingly, no one who claimed those folks were wrong bothered listening to them. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/what-is-defund-police-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/what-is-defund-police-trnd...

deleted 4y ago

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BirAdam 4y ago

First, I like this model of private policing. In the instance the article sites, the security force went at the heart of the problem rather than throwing someone into a cage. That’s a good thing. Second, if you have a failure from a public institution, a private alternative is a good thing. You get more competition, which often yields better results. Third, this isn’t very thought out, but trimming public police forces and dedicating funding and staff to more serious types of crime while allowing private police to handle petty crime could be an interesting use of resources.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
> I like this model of private policing. In the instance the article sites, the security force went at the heart of the problem rather than throwing someone into a cage. That’s a good thing. I mean this with all sincerity and zero snark: I barely recognize today's America in this story. There's a dynamic with both LEO & Privatization and it isn't leading to bulk mistreatment of vulnerable people. This lack of mistreatment is almost startling in how unfamiliar it feels.
landemva 4y ago
Fourth, if private security violates your rights you can sue. When government violates your rights they typically get the case dismissed due to 'qualified immunity' which USSC made up in 1970s.
- mcbutterbunz 4y ago
  Until the lines get blurred and an off-duty police officer starts moonlighting for private security who violates your rights while you're in commission of a crime and now the question of qualified immunity while off-duty becomes a question. It doesn't seem too unlikely where in the not-so-distant future these private security companies would be made up of accredited police officers.
  - landemva 4y ago
    > now the question of qualified immunity while off-duty becomes a question. I am curious if there is case law to support your theory. It would be hilarious to read about a city or county attorney trying to file a motion to dismiss, when the city or county would not be a party to the case.

djha-skin 4y ago

As a country we have played around with private policing (the Pinkerton detective agency) after the civil war. We decided we didn't like it. Privatization of police is bad because only those with money get the benefits. What's this article does not talk about are the countless neighborhoods and streets that don't have security guards protecting them. The article puts security guards in a very pretty light and maybe this is true, but even so: they can only go where they're paid to go. The whole point of socialization is to make sure that everybody gets a benefit, poor or rich.

jbotdev 4y ago
Well, if the problem they’re addressing is largely petty crimes against businesses like shoplifting, you really only need private security in the business districts. Preventing crime in private homes seems like it’s a much harder task for either private or public security, given the coverage area required.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Law enforcement doesn’t prevent crime (and there is no legal expectation for them to do so). They disincentives crime by seeking to punish those who previously committed a crimes, and they disincentivize vigilante justice by offering a (ideally) non-emotional legal system alternative to retribution.
  - jbotdev 4y ago
    Technically this is talking about “private security” rather than “law enforcement. The primary goal of private security is typically the security of their clients, not enforcing the law. The article in particular talks about private security preventing crime by addressing root cause (e.g. helping those in need).
ryder9 4y ago
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flandish 4y ago

rayiner 4y ago

> People who voted to defund the police are now paying for private security. Multnomah County, where downtown Portland is located, is bluer than blue. Joe Biden won there by more than 79 percent of the votes in 2020. And these people want their private security to come with guns. Leaving aside the quibble about whether anyone literally voted to “defund the police,” I do find this phenomenon interesting. Our “progressive” private school recently hired a former Detroit cop to patrol the campus with a gun. Super nice guy. But gun control is for the proletariat apparently.

rainsford 4y ago
Isn't it a fairly reasonable and consistent position to be in favor of armed professionals with a specific need to carry a weapon but opposed to everyone being able to carry a weapon around whenever they feel like it? The situation you mention is only a gotcha or a contradiction if you assume "gun control" means "nobody should ever have a gun for any reason", which I don't think is an actual view held by many people.
- rayiner 4y ago
  It’s both consistent and reasonable. We had the same policy back in old country: the common people were disarmed, while wealthy people (like my family) had armed guards.
- JoeyBananas 4y ago
  What if the average Joe is the one who has some specific need to carry a weapon? Who will hire the armed professional to protect him after they defund the police? This line of reasoning is a contradiction because it leads to the conclusion "The average Joe should carry a gun."

MilStdJunkie 4y ago

"Emma Freire is a senior writer for World magazine" which promises - on its masthead image - the following: "Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth" The Federalist, American Conservative, Former Robert Novak Journalism Fellow. Alrighty then.

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gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
I see you played the man and not the ball. I like that approach. You can quickly prevent a team from fielding if you break their legs.
- tekmate 4y ago
  it's interesting, when you start getting into debating politics in your teens it's easy to fall into the trap of attacking authors instead of arguments, then as you get older you try to be better about this and then it turns around again as you age because giving the people the benefit of the doubt again and again and spending time dismantling their arguments only for them to turn around and publish the next article repeating the same things is a waste of time
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  People's associations are part of their actions and a relevant part of the context of their writing. The commenter didn't necessarily entirely dismiss the article or the argument because of it, but it is potentially valuable information to have. It's not necessary to evaluate every work completely stripped of context to engage with it honestly. Articles are written by people, with motivations for writing them, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    > It's not necessary to evaluate every work completely stripped of context to engage with it honestly It is a blatant ad hominem comment that adds nothing to the discussion of whether or not the arguments in the article are valid, but rather is an attempt to prejudice your opinion.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Somewhat surprisingly, this seems to be basically a pro 'defund the police' argument in the end. > “If you have an effective criminal-justice system, and you have effective community partners that are assisting towards long-term community transformation, then, yes, traditional security models—the security model of observe and report—works,” he says. “But when you have a breakdown in societal connectivity, you lose the ability to operate out of that business model. So we had to come up with something unique and different.” And what they came up with is something with probably better outcomes (in terms of reducing violence) than law enforcement. Of course, there is no guarantee that private security will remain "social service-y".

Ygg2 4y ago
>Of course, there is no guarantee that private security will remain "social service-y". I think it's bound to happen. Money creeps in, the police officers are too expensive to maintain. They get replaced by blender drones. Luckily, all media will be privatized and anyone reporting might end up in a blender drone accident.

PopAlongKid 4y ago

>Hiring private security on a large scale is novel in America. No, it is not. Colleges and universities have been doing it for many decades. "Seventy-five percent of campus law-enforcement agencies have armed officers, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. Nine in 10 public campuses had “sworn” officers, meaning those who can carry a gun, have arrest power, and wear a badge; four in 10 private campuses did."[0] TFA is focused primarily on policing related to homeless persons, while I'm pretty sure with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime (murder, rape, armed robbery, gang-related activity). [0]https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/university-chicago-campus-police-armed/557471/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/univer...

colechristensen 4y ago
The local state university has a real police department created by state law, it’s not private security but as legitimate as any other police department. When you call 911 within certain areas, they’re who are dispatched. This is pretty common around the country for larger universities.
- analog31 4y ago
  I live next to a Big Ten university, and the campus police are essentially a branch of the city police department, with some special capabilities such as crowd control at the revenue sports games.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
> with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime What makes you sure of that other than the base assumption that that's what police should do so that's what they are doing? Consistently across several major urban area metro police forces the police self-reportedly spend about %5 of their time on that sort of serious violent crime. I don't see why campus police would be any higher than that.
- PopAlongKid 4y ago

travisluis 4y ago

Private policing predates public policing,[0] and so asserting that this is is a new development is not really correct. The same is true, incidentally, of firefighting: private insurance companies formed their own private brigades to protect their policyholders' property.[1] Lots of things that we tend to think of as "naturally" public services have only very recently taken that form. [0] See p. 1193 et seq. of this article: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/publication/668464/doc/slspublic/Sklanksy%20The%20Private%20Police%2046UCLALawRev1165.pdf https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/fi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Early_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Early_...

bee_rider 4y ago
The first link appears to have died, at least from my point of view, so I’ll just ask — what era was this early private police force from? In Rome for example it seems like a lot of state-like functions were performed by wealthy/prestigious patrons, right? So the line seems a little blurry there. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that bounty hunters and private security pre-date the police.

kodah 4y ago

I just moved to Portland and I live in SouthEast (where this article is talking about). It was a shock seeing guards dressed in the same kit I wore in Afghanistan. They're not exaggerating the homeless situation here either. There's tons, and many of them are addicted to fentanyl or meth. The political situation is exactly as they described. The county and city in Portland have a weird relationship. They're both "Progressive" but fight over what to do and how to spend money routinely. That's how we got the tents. It's incredibly cold in Portland and we don't have sprawling shelters to go to; most people don't want shelters near them because the homeless can be wild. For example, the night I arrived in Portland I started hearing a succession of booms. I got on to Reddit to find out that at the UHaul I'd dropped my trailer off at earlier that day that someone had tried to drill one of the gas tanks, which is made of magnesium, which sparked a fire. The fire spread to multiple vehicles and they exploded. Things like gunshots are heard pretty commonly; my neighbors deal meth, and down the street a man in the Mexican Mafia had a drive-by done on his house by his ex-girlfriend. PPB (Portland Police Bureau) isn't too interested in anything that's not immediately life threatening. I didn't know these private security firms were doing this, and I'm glad they are now that I know. This situation between our county and city is what fuels this, though. PPB is its own beast; I haven't been here long enough to know what their issues are. In true Portland style, we are a bit miffed they had the energy to shutdown the Mushroom house downtown but not to deal with immense property crime. The problem with the model in this article is that stores are protected though not all businesses will pay for private security, so we have entire brands thinking about leaving Portland. People are left out of this equation though. If someone breaks into your house or your shed, I doubt you'll have the training to do what Echelon employees have. Oregon, over night, through Measure 114 also became the state with the strictest gun laws in the country thanks to Progressives and the Lutheran Church. It's a wild state of affairs here past the Cascades.

lifeinthevoid 4y ago
Maybe I'm a bit of a small-town boy, but I find it hard to understand that a lot of people choose to live in these conditions and don't move away to somewhere quieter/safer.
- 4y ago

zuzu89 4y ago

anarchotyranny

newaccount2021 4y ago

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duped 4y ago

It sounds like one of the big problems with police are the incentives, and private security is doing a "better" job because their incentive is to reduce the actual effects of crime and not the metrics used to measure its rate/reduction (like arrests, indictments, convictions, reports, etc).

detuned 4y ago

There was a notable absence of opposing views in the article so I looked up "echelon security portland" and found a lot of objectionable actions they've taken. According to this article https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prosecutors-downtown-portland-wary-role-of-private-security/ https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prose... they've been unaccountable to the public, they've lied about what people do (pretending they've attacked them), they've lied about their use of force, and attacked people in tents to displace them. This is all just from the first quarter of the second part of a report so there is a lot more.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
Yeah. My son was detecting hints of positivity in my reaction to the story; he cautioned me that the opening blurb smelled like crafted propaganda.
- pleasantpeasant 4y ago
  The author works at The Federalist Society. A conservative online magazine. Honestly, why is this article even on HN? It's copaganda but with an even worst twist of being a pro-private military force. The militarization of the police has been an on going issue since the 90s and now we're jumping to having corporations hiring random goons as a private police force for the wealthy and their corporations.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - nucleogenesis 4y ago
      You’re right - whether being oppressed by people with the veneer of accountability or by a private military force without any, we should just shut up and accept it all as-is because there can’t possibly be any other way to have security.

AlbertCory 4y ago

> The guards turn up within minutes and apprehend the shoplifter. Stop right there. Here's how it could go: Guard: Wait right here, please. S: Am I under arrest? Guard: Please wait. What is your name? S: So I'm free to go? Guard: Please wait. What is your name? S: Buh-bye.

gwillen 4y ago
Shopkeepers have the legal power to detain shoplifters in most US jurisdictions. They've just historically (in the modern era) been too afraid to use it.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  I thought of that after writing that. A lot of legal questions come down to a game of chicken, unfortunately. Who is willing to bear the most risk? Maybe if it really was shoplifting, it goes more like this: Guard: Wait right here, please. S: Am I under arrest? Guard: You are being detained until the police arrive. What is your name? S: Oh, I'm detained? Funny, I don't notice any cuffs. So I think I'll leave now (drops goods & hops on bike). Guard: (ponders: If I tackle him, what happens?) Calls police. Now what?

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rootusrootus 4y ago

Is Portland a good example of a common problem, though? It has a weirdly shitty style of government (though in the most recent election the citizens voted to completely upend that, so there is hope), and the police have largely abdicated their responsibility to the community because their political ideology is at odds with most of the citizens. I'm totally unsurprised that organizations with the means to do so would hire their own private security to try and fill in the gap. The article clearly has an ideological bent, but as someone living in the area, they're more right than wrong with the observations. Even if you might disagree with the reasoning, the end result is accurately portrayed.

xrd 4y ago

There is also the Portland Street Response that is helping with what's happening in Portland. I would love to read a comparison of the two approaches. https://portlandstreetresponse.org/ https://portlandstreetresponse.org/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/19/portland-street-response-going-24-7-for-nonemergency-calls/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/19/portland-street-respo...

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seydor 4y ago

This didnt mention how much of policing has moved to spying through social and other internet media. it has now a large role

janalsncm 4y ago

Maybe I was not savvy enough to detect that “defund the police” was actually a call for privatization. What many people rightly identified at the time was a need for reallocation of police funds to things like social workers. All of the increases in social problems we’ve seen in the last 40 years are the tax that we pay for increasing wealth inequality.

n8cpdx 4y ago
Imagine calling for “defund the NHS” and not expecting private alternatives to spring up. This is a completely predictable outcome and reveals a lack of systems/second order thinking on the part of activists. The defund crowd imagined that if you just got rid of police, you’d get rid of all of the deep-rooted social issues that policing brings to light. If only it were so.

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jmugan 4y ago

This all sounds good, but to me it highlights the downside of not enforcing laws. If you force people to hire private security, it's going to be hard to ensure that they are all nice and reasonable. Also, it's just a bad way to live with all of these private security forces everywhere.

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xrd 4y ago

One thought: isn't this fairer, in that private businesses pay for the security they need? There are obviously some big civil liberties questions, but if a business wants to put their own security into their place of business and tout that fact as a way to bring people back downtown, I have no objections. That these private security companies are doing neighborhood security is one thing, but I know the Portland downtown is hemorrhaging businesses because of the lack of security. I'm sorry that a small mom and pop restaurant needs to foot that bill, but perhaps with a few large hotels it makes it economically viable. And, as a taxpayer, the cops I pay for don't need to do that (and they seem unwilling lately anyway).

throwaway-PDX 4y ago

I live and work in Portland. The article paints a rosey picture of a nasty set of problems. The government here is experimenting with social justice ideas. We've legalized drugs, empowered homeless camping and defunded our police. I see and empathize with the reasons to legalize drugs, not demonize the homeless or blame people for their addictions or mental health problems... and I understand the academic case for not viewing all social problems through the lense of "how can more policing fix this." All that said, our family is moving away... at the minimum to the suburbs if not to Idaho or Texas. Portland can't make these decisions in a vacuum, absent thoughtful national policy Portland has become a magnet for drug dealers and chronic drug users who are often homeless as well. While the rights of all people matter, Portland is too focused on the rights of the people like the kid in the article who are from other states and come here to destroy their lives and our community. They are not focused on my rights as a taxpayer to enjoy a safe walk around my neighborhood. We need national solutions to these issues, but until we have that I'm moving away and taking my tax dollars with me because I don't want to live in this experiment anymore. It's just not safe for my family.

quacked 4y ago
Many people who believe themselves to be anti-capitalist are in fact blinded by the capitalist myth that money can take the place of historically reliable pro-social behavior. "A good, prosperous life" is the result of many people collaborating in a trusting, honest environment, not "a community of fairly compensated people". People playing games with social justice seem to think that they can simply pay away problems like theft and ignore the ensuing consequences of large scale societal distrust that occur afterwards. When you leave they'll be more unhappy about the loss of your money than they will about the loss of your predictable, nonviolent daily habits.
landemva 4y ago
> We need national solutions to these issues You lost me there. Let's not spread the problems of Portland and SF to the other States where you can still escape.

Gasp0de 4y ago

This reads like it was written by echelons public relations department. Would you post an apple advertisement to hacker news?